ARE YOU GRATEFUL OR HURTFUL?- By Sri Krishnaji.

So many people are contributing to you, in that awareness is born gratefulness - By Sri Krishnaji.

Years ago, a gentleman came to me and asked to be mentored. In course of our conversation, he said I practice gratitude towards my mother every day. After sometime I asked him, “why do you ‘practice’ gratitude every day? You must really be angry with her.  Are you?”

The man fell completely silent. He did not have an immediate answer for that question. He requested me if he could take some time and reflect upon this question. I said, defintly, take a walk and come back.

After a long walk he came back and said, 

“Your question pushed me into seeing an uncomfortable truth. A truth that i have never seen before. 

Through out my childhood and youth my mother pushed me towards success, towards excellence. She was tough, harsh, demanding, never ever pleased with whatever I achieved. Today I am a successful businessman. I know I have to be grateful to her for who I am today. If not for her push I will not be this successful. And this is the precise reason why I practice gratitude.”

Now let us look at the story of this man. On the one hand his conscious mind is fed with all the values. That says, you should be grateful.  While on the other hand, his actual experience is the emotions of anger, hate and ingratitude that he is experiencing from the unconscious. He does not want to recognize anger, hate, ingratitude. Because he is not supposed to feel those emotions. If he feels them he is not a good human being. 

 He is only supposed to feel grateful. And hence he is a divided being- that is why he is trying to practising gratitude every day . 

I would say begin with your journey recognising what exactly you are feeling, 

Know this-Gratitude cannot be cultivated forcefully as an attitude . It has to be an awareness that has to grow in you. An awareness of the contribution not just of one person,  Why your mother alone,- but an awareness Of the contribution of all the people in your life, of the tree outside your garden,  Of  the innumerable life forms , of the divine. 

It is an awareness that you exist  because of all these being’s contributions. 

Without them you are not. 

As this  awareness grows in you there is spontaneous arising of gratitude with in you. To nurture this awareness would be a magnificent way to awaken the state of gratitude with in you. 

Do not make it into a cheap habit of continually  saying thank you, because that is what you ought to do  and that is how are expected to be. 

Do not also make it into a compulsion a kind of guilt driven exercise, where you say -I have to be grateful, I have to be grateful. 

you donot “have” to feel anything. 

There is no compulsion in this universe that you “have” to feel something. No, 

That is a new prison you are creating for yourself in the name of spirituality. Grow ! Grow in your awareness of how life as a movement is flowing into you. 

So many people are contributing to you, in that awareness there is gratefulness, that gratefulness will make you in to a responsible human being - not a burdensome responsibility , but will provoke you to action. Action that will create a difference around you, action that will make the world around you more beautiful -that to me would be gratitude.